Age of Winters
by TheElvenKingOberon94
Summary: Equestria is on the edge of collapse- the Six Houses that keep the peace are stuck in their ways that have been good and proper these last eight thousand years. But a old menace from the past begins to stir and she is bringing the winds of winter with her. And the ponies are not united against her threat like they were before- rebellions and plots abound in this game of the throne.


The Six Houses and the Faustian Dynasty were created in the wake of the win in what many ponies now term "The Battle of Winter's End, in which the Six Companions and Queen Faust used Heartsbane and ended the reign of the Windigo Queen Chione. Queen Faust soon ascended to the Eternal Herd's love in the hundredth year of her reign.

The Six Houses and the daughters of Faust- Princesses Celestia Solarys and Luna Nocturnys have ruled in general happiness these last thousand years. . .

-From The Histories

**Year Eight Thousand Since The Founding of the Faustian Dynasty**

_Princess of the Northern Cold_

Days like like did not make for good tidings. The winds blew hard against the walls of her city and the Crystal Ponies grew restless in the streets as the news passed from the gossip of old mares and the whores that pleasured her citizens for a bit of the Equestrian coin that had come into favor ever since Crystallos had been annexed in one of the peace treaties that kept her neighbors to the South happy.

The Princess of the Northern Cold, sometimes stylized as Princess Cadenza Amore, looked down sadly as the funeral procession of her husband from the south passed by her balcony on its procession southward through the middle of the city. Nopony dared to utter a word as the hearse dragged onwards past the baking shops, the crystal smithies, and even the brothels that her Shining Armor must have tasted once or twice.

For she hadn't enjoyed the last few years since her beloved Shining Armor had rusted since the Battle of Buffalo Hills where he had took a poisoned dart to his leg and had to have the useless blackened, infected thing amputated. Then came the bouts of drunkenness, the nights of him sliding onto her and using her as his plaything while whispering about how he wished she would lose her pregnancy weight and that she was an awful lay.

Cadenza just wished he would have died painfully and not just disappeared after his emotionless doll of a Court Magus sister tried to make him happy again with promises of youth if she could just perform one more test with him as the subject. And as that mad alchemist was wont to do- something went wrong- Cadenza still remembered the look of glee that the court magus Twilight Clover had on her mouth talking about possible time stream changes and forward motion particles of temporal rifting and whatnot.

But now that hearse, in all but purpose, dragged itself ever onwards as ponies tried to hold out a hoof in solidarity to just touch the King Consort's final throne before it got shipped off to the plot end of nowhere.

Cadenza could just stifle a laugh. _Look at the hero that the Faustian Dynasty elevated above all the rest of her royal herd. And I damned hope that you are burning in some sort of Tartarus for being my husband, because the only thing that you gave me is our Skyla._

The alicorn filly slept fitfully in the inner sanctum of her mother's room under a fur lined sheet that warmed her shivering body to no noticeable effect. Her mother walked slowly towards the filly, gently clasping the lock that kept the balcony separate from her quarters and ruffled her mane. The pink filly cracked open an eye and gave her mother a tired smile.

"Hey mom. Were you going to bed now?" The large, innocent eyes waited for a truthful answer.

"Yes, sweetie. I was just staying up to give your father a send off." Her daughter flinched as she remembered the father that she barely remembered, the one that smothered her in kisses and threw her in the air to make her feel like the wind blew in her hair like it would naturally if the pegasi hadn't condemned anypony with wings to a grounded existence.

Her daughter pushed the sheets back and stretched to get the nerves in her useless wings to stop being asleep. Being born with wings was a curse. The surgery of cutting the wing muscles, so that flight was impossible, was done during birth and so winged horses had a web of scars that was their mark of race betrayal.

Cadenza's heart broke again. Her daughter would not know the feeling of flight, of soaring in the sky with her wings outstretched and fold her body into a diving position letting the air stream push her into a death spiral, seeing the ground rush up to meet her and pulling up at the last seconds to glide over her kingdom while ponies waved happily. Her husband had clipped her. He had said any child had it done. Even if it was his own daughter.

Those doctors had cut her daughter's magic to make their stupid point. She had tried to teach her daughter the beauty of the ether composing all living things during one of her rare relaxational moments where the pink alicorn was just a mare. Not some warrior goddess come from on high as described by the Southland's Wayreader. But every attempt that she had tried to caress the magic receptors with magic, her Skyla had cried out in pain and had slumped to the cold crystalline floor in a catatonic state that had lasted for days.

Cadenza had stayed by her daughter's bedside- mane wracked with sweat and limply hanging across her back, her regalia forgotten in a dimly lit corner of her bedroom, and her eyes blank pools staring into her worried soul. That was around the time when her loving husband had shut himself off in his castle of alcoholism and abuse. And it all had to do with how her daughter's wings were bent away from her body, the flight feathers dipped in low grade acid, and the muscles cut and hastily scarred over to torture any thought of betrayal from a pegasus' mind.

_Maybe I should have knighted his sister. Wouldn't have been so out of place in Celestia's domain. After all, death is celebrated with her wars against those buffaloes and the smiting of the Changeling Hive. What's death but just her Magus's playground?_

_The Court Magus_

Twilight Clover poured over the books that were related in breaking the limit of temporal magic. Most magic of that kind was set with limiters that hampered the power of the spell in the spell matrices that her ancestor Starswirl had created. After she had figured how to crack the code of how he had hidden the matrices in plain sight, she had cut the aether threads and replace them with sigils of power. The current array that had transported her brother to Faust knows where had been set up around a five-pointed star pattern.

"Did the extra power cause the array to malfunction- or were my materials wrong? I did what I thought Starswirl said." Each point had their own special ingredient. Gold, mercury, antimony, lead, and the blood of a cadaver that she had dug up. Combining dark blood magic and alchemy had been her thesis in the School of Arcana. It was one of the reasons she was Celestia's Magus- the other two reasons were nepotism and her prowess with battle magic.

But her love was in the dissection of bodies. Seeing how the blood that the Herd gave their mortal children run out and pool on the floor. The knowledge on how poisons affected the body:from the nice action of the coffee plants of the southern continent to the poisons that made you choke on your tongue and suffocate for air while clawing your throat out. It almost made her shiver with anticipation to see that on a living creature while she cataloged the effects for science.

A pony cleared their throat to push her out of her reverie and Twilight turned to see the Royal Captain, Flash Sentry, standing watchful at the door of her tower. The walls were covered in mad writings and the flag of House Clover- a purple and gold banner with the motto "Knowledge Breeds Connections" and the legendary sigil of Clover the Clever: a raven holding a scroll in its beak.

"What do you want? Can't you see how busy I am with figuring out how to get my brother back?"

The Captain sighed and bowed to the pony that outranked him by a few grades of magnitude and that could burn him to a crisp with little more than a thought. "It's just that Her Royal Highness wants to see you about what we should do about the Northern wastes. With the loss of Shining Armor, she loses a pawn that keeps the kingdom from collapse. The Windigos-"

"Are but a myth."

"Still she would love to talk to you."

"Fine, fine. Tell her I'll be teleporting into her Royal Chambers for the debriefing," With a whisk of her hoof, the door shut and the annoyance was dealt with. _I wish that this position didn't need me to talk to ponies. Waste of my time._

Twilight went back to her work, items flying around her in a flurry. She needed to fix her mistake. Celesia wasn't the most understanding of ponies when dealing with failure. The last failure had cost her some privileges with the Archives and that had been harrowing days of begging the court for hand me down books about vivisection or even a secondhand edition of _A Foal's Guide To Equine Anatomy_.

Celestia had told her that taking away her reading material was just a temporary measure to stop her Sun Court from dealing with protesters from the Academy. The masters there had derided her for performing her thesis on how the idea of alchemically created alicorns and how grafting a horn to an earth pony, cutting off the wings of political prisoners from the Usurper's Southern farce of a Queendom, and using a levitation array that gave the wings flight capabilities was a feasible alternative to ascension.

Her teachers had almost run out screaming when she had wheeled in her test subject that she had bribed with promises of food and a chance for a hot meal.

She wondered how that beggar was doing now in the haze of drugs that kept her thesis alive and kicking, its muscles contracting in spasms of pain as its magic tried to force its way out of an underdeveloped magic lobe that was racially set in stone- Twilight had tried so hard to find suitable candidates for her process. But every pony that wasn't an earth pony to begin with wasn't strong enough to hold their body together.

Rather bad form when your science project died of necrosis and gangrene from the surgical scars. Though Twilight smiled. She hadn't expected her plaything of science to praise her like a mother and go insane from the power.

Twilight began to chuckle at how fun ponies were to play with and it was all thanks to her brother's war record. For Shiny had been a very good partner in crime for her experiments when she was just a defenseless filly.

Or that's what her parents still thought of the most powerful and influential pony outside of the Princess and her glorious childhood of learning just what made ponies tick.

_Pegasi of the Seas_

Rainbow "Dash" Hurricane, daughter of the cloudy sky stared down upon her floating home from the crow's nest of her family's fortress of a ship. They called it Cloudracer and she had been the only thing in the skies outside of the Southern Queen's Shadow Corps and her race of thestrals. Those creatures were some unholy match made in Tartarus between ponies and some sort of bat.

Rainbow had only seen them once and that one time hardened her against those things- she shook her head to get away from the memories and looked at the rising dawn from the east. Its colors of blues, reds and oranges lit up the sky in a painting of colors- the clouds dancing in the rising of the heat giving sun.

Rainbow grinned- though she faltered when she realized that they were coming right near the old flight grounds of her ancestors. She felt the ship sigh in tired necessity- she was a relic from before the clipped wings made the pegasi fall to earth and cry out in anguish at what they had lost.

Rainbow's wings ached to fly but her faint Icari told one and all that she was one of the Forsaken- the entire race was.

She just tried to stretch her wings out of their crooked posture and fold them as close to her body as she could- though he wings bent outward because of the surgery she never wanted. She had never asked to be severed from her talent of flight and yet by Royal Decree hundreds of years ago- Celestia had made every pegasi subservient to her.

"Well at least we are her foundation. She has gotten a little complacent with how she treats us-"

Rainbow looked up and saw her mother- her pink coat and blue mane swept back in a long and well kept fashion, her cutie mark of lightning bolts stood out proudly on her flank. Firefly smiled serenely at her daughter- a laugh forming on her lips as she had one against climbed the rigging of the ship and found her daughter caught with her head in the clouds.

"Mom, I- " Rainbow sat and waited for her mother to speak.

"Don't give me that pouting face. I knew you were thinking about how our noble ruler so gladly treats have been moping about our course that your father and I set for Cloudsdale's ruins for these last few weeks."

Dash crossed her hooves and glanced away from her mother because she knew that she was in trouble.

"But mom-"

"Don't even try that sweetie. Now your sister has been pestering us on where you have been for that last few days and you know how persuasive Scootaloo can be when she gets her mind stuck on something and she does adore you."

"Okay I'll go see her. But why did you choose to fly over Cloudsdale anyway? There's at least seven faster ways to get to the Platinum holds in the east from Southern Comforts and none have us going near here."

Firefly just smiled her knowing smile and put a hoof through her mane to collect her thoughts. "Well I thought of one certain pegasus who might need a sense of perspective on how Celestia makes her decisions."

The ruins of Cloudsdale stared up at the passing airship and the ruined spires of the Eyrie Court shimmered in Celestia's sun. Rainbow could see the hints of cloud thoroughfares in the passing airstream- the air so full of magic that even a few centuries could not dampen the sight of ambient magic signatures of thousands of flying pegasi.

It had been her ancestor, Commander Storm Hurricane who had built the city with his bare hooves and the help of Queen Faust after she had taken the throne and it had stood for millennia until the Pegasi Rebellion has caused the Sundering of Cloudsdale. Celestia had invaded the pegasi stronghold with her sister and herself in full armor and had caused the entire race to submit or be destroyed.

Then Luna had told her sister to destroy an image of the rebellion and kill the leaders. Which she did reluctantly do in order to show that she meant business.

"We have lost our homeland but we are still alive. And you have to let go of the past and try to fix the future." Firefly left her daughter to think about what she said.

_Daughter of Madness_

Lady Pinkamena Puddinghead- so formal and not what she liked to call herself in private- sat uncomfortably on her throne in Southern Comforts in the Sandy Wastes. She felt her body twitch in anticipation for her Court to end and for her to get on with her day. Lady Pinkie was currently attempting to stay focused on this angry mare that owned a cherry orchard or something.

"My Lady, I have to say that those pegasi that had so rudely departed from my establishment should no longer be able to end the city and should be moored outside the gates. Its just too dangerous to have an ancient ship like theirs to fly in and breach our earth pony home."

"Wow, okay- well I have to say that that was such a boring speech." Pinkie smiled and tried not to giggle when Cherry Jubilee tried to gape at her for being so rude. But she had been so boring. Court was never her thing.

Must have been the Puddinghead genes at it again. Pinkie heard her friendly servants say something about that. Pinkie thought short and quick to fix this accidental goof."I mean- oopsie. Uh, you are saying that because you don't like the Hurricane family and their rather exciting way to have fun, that I should ban them from one of their trading posts that Princess Celestia has given them?"

"Well my Lady, they put itching powder all over my orchard and we can't even go near our trees without sneezing up a storm-"

This time Pinkie did laugh, her laughter comes out in small waves of joy that brightened the rather cold and tired room. After a few minutes she stopped and looked down happily at her most annoying and not fun pony in the whole of Southern Comforts.

"Well Cherry Jubilee, that sounds kind of fun and you know how much I like fun. I think that I will welcome this entire family with a big party once they come back and get some pointers on how to prank ponies better because that does sound like a good idea."

Cherry Jubilee frowned and stormed out without taking the complementary cherry chimichangas that the Cakes had helped bake to celebrate Pinkie's special day.

Finally the Court day ended with her Mad Knights closing the petitioner entrance to the castle and locking in step with their skipping leader of the area,

Pinkie looked at her knights in their festive and rather fancy armor that copied Discord's body with lions paws and mismatching wings on both of the Knights bodies. They were as silent as they could be, Pinkie could at least give them that.

They had been through a lot and she was their honorary aunt. The two of them took position at the two sides of the closed door and stood as sentinels against any enemies of Pinkie's.

The door ahead was a large oaken shield against any intruder that would try to enter her private chambers and she knocked gently to not wake the ponies inside.

Slowly the door opened with a snap of one's fingers and Pinkie smiled to see her family that the world knew of. She had kept her other family that raised her secret and they were her best spymasters.

"Oh boy that Jubilee had another problem with Dashie's pranks."

Her husband unfurled his serpentine body and leaned on his lion paw. Discord was a rather strange creature to rule a hold of the size of Southern Comforts- he knew it once as Appleloosa- but that was a rather long time ago.

"Well the Jubilee's were always a problem family. Silver Jubilee went insane after the feast of Heartsbane and I think it was because someone poisoned her food with the tiniest hint of mercurial potion. Golden Jubilee was a decent banker but got too greedy and got crushed by a large diamond. Diamond Jubilee was the exception, rather nice mare. But Cherry has the madness of her family- or at least the entitlement that she's a noble pony.

Discord just sat up and the magical projector that had appeared to show the family records blinked out of existence.

"Want some popcorn?" Discord shook a bowl full of popcorn at Pinkie but she shook her head no. She wasn't in the mood for salty snacks.

"So should I throw a party for her to cheer her up or something?" Pinkie's general skill at ruling was eclipsed often from her talents of party planning and pranking. She had met only a few other ponies that could match her- The Earl of Sandwich, the court jester at Canterlot- Ponyacci, and Dashie.

Discord sighed, he loved his wife but sometimes she could be a little too obsessed with parties. It also didn't help that he had multiple centuries to learn his chaos causing conjuring. Even Celestia, the ever loving bore, could get behind some of his lesser pranks and hijinks.

Celestia had given him his current position after he had tried to turn the moon into actual cheese and of course not worrying about how the tides would be affected. He had decided that rivers of syrup would have been a good replacement for water. Those were some good times.

But sometimes he knew when to bend the rules a little bit and cause chaos in his own special way. For what were laws but special tests to see how creative one could get with loopholes and panache?

"Pinkie, what if I told you that there was a totally harmless way for Golden Jubilee to stay quiet without us having to burn through the budget yet again on one of your party hurricanes? I mean think of the wasted potential that you could spend on her.. She might not be the best candidate for a Pinkie Party- remember what happened last time at the Gala?"

Pinkie's eyes drooped at her worst moment. She had personally tried to show how much she appreciated being the Lady of Southern Comforts but her plan backfired so badly that she was still trying to pay off the property damage her party cannonade had done to the stained glass windows.

"Yes,. Yes I do. But I learned my lesson, Dissy. I did. Use less cake batter next time."

Discord just shook his head and laughed at his wife's little joke. "And you wonder where Screwball gets her deliciously chaotic ideas- it sure isn't from me. I am a proud and reformed member of my non-existent race!"

Pinkie Pie just laughed at his display of bravado. And she thought the uniform and the floating trumpets playing along were just what she liked.

"Okay, you silly goof."

Pinkie Pie bounced as she bounded out the door, completely oblivious to the shiver that ran down Discord's spine as she turned to leave. Discord knew that feeling once or twice before. There was one good thing when you were the Avatar of Chaos and Disharmony. You could have a fair warning of when someone bad was going to come back.

"This changes some of my plans I had." Discord pouted and ran off in a poof of magic to check on some of his safeguards against what was coming. Maybe he should tell Celestia? Or Luna? He knew that playing the sisters like fiddles was just not harmonious- but harmony was just not his bag of tricks.

_The Queen's Inquisitors_

The Royal Capital was a seedy little prostitute of a place when it chose to be. The streets of the old section were cobblestone and magical infused rock that could withstand centuries of change without a crumbling face to show for it. But the beggars who ambled in and around the tombs of the earliest ministers of peace and security always changed their tunes in the intervening aeons of time. While the rich lived in their holds and castles and dined on the working pony's labor, the slums of Canterlot were a hive of complete insanity.

Some peddlers of snake oils and hoaxes went around each and every corner while sewer rats the size of cats bounded around the squares chased by filthy children that were born, raised, and died her every day.

Trixie Clover hated this assignment. For the smell and general apathy that the poor had to show for their work and for her bumbling idiot of a partner. And her mind itched with that stupid inhibitor of her magic stopping her natural flow.

"Hey Trixie!"

Eternal Herd, he was persistent.

"What?" Trixie turned to meet her partner for this journey to the heart of the caverns of Canterlot to get this unknown political prisoner out of her hideout. "Don't you see, you bloody dolt that we are being watched by these ponies?"

Her partner stopped and looked around and smiled. Trixie hated that smile. She hated that white pearly coat and blue eyes and blonde mane that framed his hair just- No. Trixie pulled her conspirator close and whispered into his ear,

**"We're here on business for the Inquisitors and not for your pleasure cruise to the red light district-" She shushed his complaints with a hard look and went on, "and you don't want Trixie to tell your trueborn sisters what you've been doing on free time." Trixie let that threat hang in the air as she found the bar she was looking for. **"Come on you sissy, we have work to do."

Blueblood Platinum let his head hang low because his partner knew about his doll collection that he might have scrounged from his two sisters' collections while they weren't looking and slipping a maid or two a sidelong glance of course.

He may a bastard in the eyes of the law but he had some perks that came with his highborn bastard status: he could be rather good at games of chance and score with some fine mares if he wanted to. So what if he couldn't inherit his father's estate and have to hear his sister Rarity talk about high society fashion like a fanatic. Sweetie Belle was a different case altogether.

He did love Sweetie Belle. Mostly it was because she was nice to him.

"Okay, Blueblood- think of a happy place. This isn't a bar, this is your little sister's tea party. Act casual."

Trixie was already sitting at the bar sipping a heavily watered cider and grimacing. Blueblood hastily took a seat so she couldn't glare daggers into him. He actually was a bit worried about that. The Clovers were always highly attuned to magic and Trixie was one of, if not the most powerful in terms of raw power- her sister had the technical skill, and their brother had the military genius.

"Okay, doofus. I have a bad feeling about this." Trixie eyed the patrons with a wary glance and she tried to calm her nerves by tapping one of her hooves to the music radiating from the stage. She would have liked it more, if every patron of this seedy establishment wasn't staring at them.

"Really? I couldn't tell."

"Was that a joke? Or are you being extra annoying today?"

"Well its not like everyone in here is watching us. You're just being paranoid about this mission. Lighten up, I have. And its not like everyone in here is a evil bug or something-"

Trixie scanned around the room. And she whitened as she could see the color of the eyes change for the other ponies in the bar to a sickly emerald green hue. Trixie scowled to herself- this was going in her report. Blueblood could be a probability changing machine, but sometimes the world was a right mighty whore when it came to his luck.

Trixie pulled her companion to the floor as the glamours of the amassed Changelings dissipated and their fangs burst through the roofs of their mouths in a bloody display that they were insect based and highly evil. The buzzing of their wings could be heard loudly in the bar and it drowned out every sound but loud yelling. Which Blueblood was getting full force from Trixie at this moment.

"You just had to say that- haven't you ever read the stupid manual? It says in bold letters that Changelings were not wiped out you-" Trixie's face was blushing in anger and she was breathing hard after the tirade she had quickly gave her partner.

"Oops. Though look, not every pony was a Changeling- though I did count us in that total."

"Yes, oops. Spitfire told us to go in the hideout carefully and not have every Changeling know we were here."

Blueblood just grinned sheepishly, his mane hanging limply and a bruise quickly forming after Trixie had almost slammed him into the floor in defense.

"So Plan B?"

Trixie sighed. "Yes, Trixie guesses so."

The higher ups were not going to like this. Sticking to the plans usually involved these two ideas- Plan A: Go according to plans of the Inquisitors. Or Plan B: Cause as much damage as possible.

They were nicknamed the Bomb Squad for a reason. They had their own personal bomb and her name was Trixie.

Blueblood applied pressure to her cranial ring of metal that was changed with anti-magical shielding and braced for imminent death and more death.

Trixie could feel everything in the room now. She breathed in the magical taste of the ether that was surrounding everyone in the room, pony and Changelings alike, and she drew it in. Her pitiful aura that the scientists had placed on her as a limiter expanded and the room filled with a soft blue glow as surrounding energy was sucked into the growing alicorn-like power sink.

Trixie grinned. Blueblood may have been an annoying highborn bastard- but she was a bastard through and through, thankfully because her family was awful. But true bastards had one great fun advantage to normal ponies. They were ridiculously powerful. And slowly went insane from their low level alicorn sized font of magic and a bubble of influence on reality that was just a bit too chaos-like for most ponies liking. In short, they were both dangerous and useful. And envied if Twilight's fanatical devotion to alicorns was anything to go by.

Trixie just knew that Discord had something to do with that reality warping bit.

Trixie smiled a wide grin and walked over to the Changelings and sat daintily on the floor in front of them. The lead Changeling, a wide shouldered and feral looking brute tried to nip at Trixie's neck with teeth that were as sharp as daggers.

_Well they would be. If I let him get close that is._

Trixie channeled deep within herself and called out her favorite showy spell. With a breath she aimed it at the Changelings and put only a fraction of her full power behind it.

"Hey Blueblood? You better duck."

_Fyrverkeri_

Her magic shot out at the back wall of the bar in a hazy mix of sparkling, crackling magic that imitated her favorite type of magic based tech that the world had to offer her- fireworks. Trixie laughed and threw up a hasty shield to protect her from the immediate effects of setting of a firework spell scaled to the size of a bomb- blast radius injuries, flash burns, shrapnel- all could kill an opponent and more in a battle.

Trixie had learned that quickly when your younger sister thought everyone was a means to an end in scientific research and development of weapons. And that was only when she was eight- her Court Magus of a sister now had the political power to back up her threats.

Maybe it all started when her father figured out that Twilight was a sociopathic terror and sent her to Celestia's little school. Well, they also had said that Trixie was the good daughter- so maybe resentment made Twilight crazier than a sack of nuts.

Trixie filed her discussion for later and nodded her head to Blueblood to walk in front of her. She may have had power rivaling what that little alicorn should have been able to do in a few decades- if Trixie's bastard brother didn't place the stigma of the Icari on her niece.

She grinned and looked down to the cellar basement's access to the caverns.

"Hey, Chrissie. This is the Inquisitors, Bet you didn't expect us to show up. No one expects us."

_The Usurper_

The self-stylized Princess of the Night Sky and Vanquisher of True Evil stared down at her assorted battalions of thestrals that were amassed in her royal yards. The castle was a new addition to her lands in the last thousand years of separation from her sister but she had made it her home by carefully tending her flock of thestrals.

Especially from that barbaric display of that surgery her sister's medical staff had thought necessary to quell the rebellion. After she had told her sister to just destroy Cloudsdale as a fair measure in terms of war.

That had begun the split- but then her sister's ministers thought it'd be a great idea to weaken Luna's thestral guards as well. Even with the Dragon Lands in shambles from the last time Discord had gallivanted across the realm and tainted some of their leaders into splitting the race in half in a civil war. And the gryphons were on their other borders trying to claw away their border power.

So Luna did the worst thing she could do to her sister- fighting her in open combat above the Everfree Forest near where Foresthaven was now. But she and her sister were evenly matched and she did not dare to use the dark eldritch magics that were so tempting in the Neighcronomicon- so Luna abdicated the throne and hid away with her devout followers here in the Badlands. And Luna went into the history books as the evil sister.

"Princess?"

Luna blinked and shifted her weight on her throne. Her mane of stars shimmered in shifting hues of blue as she tried to regain composure.

"What is it? I hope this is important-"

"Uh, yeah, that's the thing. My buddies and I were just looking for Nightingale, Descent, and Freefall- but we can't find them anywhere." The thestral guard, Luna didn't remember his name- she had so many of them, backed away in case her Royal Temper was going to blow out the nearby balcony.

But it never came as Luna just smirked and breathed easily as she looked at the thestral, Nocturne if Luna remembered correctly, and stepped down from her throne and looked out at her little piece of heaven.

"Why Nocturne, my Shadow Corps are helping get one of my most ardent supporters out of my sister's lands right now. Knowing how used to non-airborne opponents her Guards and Inquisitors have become in these passing centuries, I think there won't be any foreseen problems."

Luna levitated a piece of fruit over to the thestral to show her appreciation for him and she watched as his fangs popped out with a trickle of blood and his slitted eyes began to glow with that race trait of all thestrals.

She had wanted vamponies in one of her phases, but she had crossed the wrong type of bat and thanks to that her troops loved fruit like her sister's troops loved cider. But that's what happens when you cross ponies with vampire fruit bats.

"I do hope Celestia does like our little flair for the dramatic. I had send them with a little gift."

_The Queen's Inquisitors_

Trixie really did hate caves. There was such a bad rap with those things- ursas, evil demon kings, windigos, evil breezies- they all were attracted to creepy caves and Trixie was not one that liked coincidences.

This mission seemed too coincidental. First, the Changelings were just too easily taken down and not the terrible things the made Celestia create the Sandy Wastes with a white hot bolt of concentrated plasma. And then she wasn't an idiot like her womanizing partner and noticed when something smelled like a trap.

Trixie's blue glow of pure mana emanated from her and Blueblood had made a rather bad crack of calling her a glorified night light in this pitch black darkness. He was lucky he didn't get a new black eye from that comment- but High Inquisitor Spitfire had told her to stop hitting Blueblood because it looked bad for morale or something.

"Trixie? What's that weird rumbling noise?"

Trixie had no idea, but since they were in the ancient crystal caverns that were first found in the beginnings of the Windigo War and still mostly unexplored thanks to the fact that there was a rumor that Queen Chione of the Windigos hid a magic mirror or something that was super dangerous- it hadn't been explored since the times of Aegon Clover.

Her ancestor, of course. Trixie never liked her family's insistence for complete excellence and ancestor worship- she just liked a nice pension and maybe a night on the town after beating up a bad guy or two.

But whatever it was it was close and it sounded like it was going to be a party.

Blueblood hated parties. He hated both types: the high society soirees and Trixie's 'parties' which were just her getting drunk off her plot after a mission, berating him about the mission, and then blowing up the bar because her cranial ring was seemingly made out of papier mache and prone to breaking on Trixie's whims.

So here Blueblood was with a crazy mare that rated at least a seven on the Aegon-Kovacs scale of alicorn rankings- a ten being the Princess. And she would be a unrefined tool in his quest to get out of this shitstorm with his now only decently coiffed mane and his dignity intact.

Blueblood was always a fan of the dramatic flair but sometimes his partner was a tad too dramatic.

Well at least he enjoyed playing the fool to make her a bit less prone to imploding the downtown area of the Queen's City.

"Hey doofus, I can't wait til I see that Changeling Queen all surprised at us being there." Trixie was smiling gleefully as she tried to sneak as quickly to the rumbling noise that was emanating from the caverns ahead of them.

And Blueblood had to defuse the walking bomb before she took down a portion of the irreparable catacombs of the early Faustian dynasty. Some of these tombs were of his ancestry and his oldest sister had been having a rather black and terrible temper when she heard about such happenings.

"Hey, Trixie. Why don't I stand in front of you and be the one who the Queen sees first?"

Trixie just gave him an infuriating cocky grin and chuckled. "And what you'd talk to her about the differences in our political systems? That would bore her to death."

Blueblood tried to think happy thoughts as the slight against his political interests were slighted but he soldiered on. "Well, remember who caught a whiff of the Lunar Cults _without_trying to hold hostage every single one of their family members?"

Trixie scoffed. "So Trixie has a small anger problem. Trixie is seeing her psychiatrist."

"And who has the entire Fae Courts asking for your blood after the last diplomatic incident?"

"How should I have known that those Bushwoolies were also allergic to iron?"

"They are the Fae-"

"Yeah, yeah, magical floating butterfies from the sky-"

Blueblood's day was usually like this. "At least read the enclosed manual next time and don't just use it for kindling."

"But the wilderness was making Trixie cold and only the huge manual was big enough to cure her of camping flu."

"That is not a real disease and you know it-" The two unicorns walked into the large antechamber like cavern bickering and making as much noise as possible, completely obvious to the three thestrals and Changeling Queen staring them right in the face.

Blueblood just grinned and cursed the Eternal Herd for his rotten luck.

_Heart Of Darkness_

Rarity Platinum, eldest daughter of the Platinum lineage stared down from her balcony on her father's royal castle down on the bustling city down below- her father's estates held the riches of the kingdom, for much of the wealth passed through either Aurum or Platina on the eastern seaboard of Equestria.

And Rarity held the keys to the kingdom with her father seeing her potential at a young age and giving her the reins of the Minister of Commerce job. True, her father had to talk to the Princess directly but she had seen his side.

After of course a demonstration of her prowess with trading and getting rather generous returns on investments without using underhoofed means of gain.

Life was rather good for her. She got to go to all the swanky balls and mingle with the equally rich and famous royals. And even her home life was great- her sister was in the Music Observatory for her noticeable talents in singing, and her brother was her brother,

_Oh but Rarity, you forgot little old me. I was the one who got you here after all- you could call me your Ambition._

Rarity looked over at a close mirror and noticed her two reflections. It looked to most observers that she had only one reflection, but if a pony could look close enough- they could see the shimmering wavy reflection shift between a normal one reflection view of her to two reflections.

One was her normal appearance- her white coat and three diamonds with a curled to perfection purple mane and tail. But the other, standing in most ponies peripheral vision was a jet black unicorn huge in scope but small in focus with a star mane made of purple ethereal nothingness.

Rarity had started seeing her after finding the old crypt in the back and discovering a small book in there- Inspiration Manifestation, the book was called.

It was a dry read but her visitor was fun to discuss her ideas with.

_So my little host, what do you plan to do with all this power? You who control the purse?_

Rarity thought- she could be anypony. But she knew a few strings in her web could help Equestria. She might have a possible wight living off her thoughts but she could use the help in the political turnings she had seen in the Queen's Court.

That Court Magus was going to either be her best friend in her plan or her worst enemy- and she had kept eyes on the other holds by paying off spies. She had no news of how the Hurricanes thought and she didn't dare think of where her spies disappeared after arriving in Southern Comforts, but she thought that possibly she could use them to stop the prophecy that the Wayreader had given her when she was just a filly.

She had to or else the Six Families would be in open rebellion.

_But even the best prophecies can come true in unexpected ways._

_The Wayreader_

The Cathedral of the Seven was a landmark that was front and center in the Queen's City. Its spiraling towers and stained glass windows spoke of the many feats of the Faustian Dynasty and their connection to the Eternal Herd that every pony went to after death.

The current Wayreader, Bright Eyes sat chanting to the heavens in her private chambers. The drafty cold made her shiver and cling tightly to her red robes in hopes of stopping her fears coming true. The seven small idols were representations of the large statues that graced each and every Cathedral of the Seven in each hold's capital.

She twitched, her body aching with the constant supplication and her scars on her wings acting up again. Her blonde mane was untrimmed and long in the fashion of the earliest Wayreaders and her caring eyes looked at two directions at once.

She began the prayers to the Seven. Each was an Aspect of the World and extremely powerful in the eyes of the Church.

"Praise Be to Jormungand the Tatzlwurm that keeps the world together and is the father of the mountain shapers. With him, we thrive. Without him, we die."

She planted a kiss on the stylized statue of the giant Tatzlwurm with his mouth open and his three tongues wrapped around his tail. She turned to the next, her hooves clicking on the stone floor.

"Praise Be to Nidhogg, The Dragon Ascendant and Bringer of Eventual Decay. All things must die at some point as the gift of life is but a brief flame in the darkness. We should be grateful that we even get to get see the sunrise as we could die at any moment."

Click clack.

"Praise Be to Queen Mother Eterna- the creator of ponykind and mother of us all. She is the Bringer of Life and her daughters rule us in selfless grace. Without guidance, we are blind and alone. Heed the sound of hooves and follow."

Click clack.

"Praise Be to Aeolus, The King of the Breezies and Bringer of the Seasons. He is joyful like the spring growth, passionate like the summer heat, and wise like the fall harvest season. And never cross him for his temper is like the winter cold."

Click clack.

"Praise Be to the Ether Personified. The void that created our connection to his body and mind with what we call magic. His font is endless and permeates through us all. He is ever watchful of his gifts as they can be taken away with the greatest of ease.

Bright Eyes' wings spasmed at that remembrance of pain. Click clack around the circle.

"Praise Be to Scorpan, Giver of Reason. He who gave us knowledge of ourselves and what the Way is. The Way is Friendship, and it is a part of our souls to know each and every one who has touched our lives in profound ways. Know yourself and you shall find peace."

Click clack around and around the circle.

"Praise be to Tirek. He who taught us the basics of morality. He who fell from grace in the beginning from a wayward thought and deed, and who learned the dear price that evil costs in well being. Without him, we would be ignorant of how our actions are dependent on everypony's personal code of good and evil and how sometimes they might conflict in certain responsibilities. Think about this."

Bright Eyes smiled and walked slowly out of her chambers to do a final look over her cathedral when she felt the white hot pain of prophecy begin moving in a massive headache that made her head pulse with amplified sound and bright lights.

_We need to get out now._

_No._

_I rise again._

Bright Eyes felt those three sentences echo in her mind as the moon rose in the sky and darkened the land with its blanket of stars. She knew something was up since her visions of most events were never wrong- and they were perverse with their hidden meanings. She knew it was a bad vision of the future because unlike most good to middling fortunes- the bad visions never showed the scene. They were glad to just have distant echoes of terror or screaming agony in their musical accompaniments.

Bright Eyes had to forego her quick walk around and trotted up to the aerie of her messenger ravens. She had to tell the churches to prepare for news of a major event.

She only hoped that it wasn't a doozy.

_The Lady of Peace_

Fluttershy smelled the air in the Smokey Mountain and felt the wind shift in its direction as she watched the leaves fall in spinning whirlwinds of color. She loved the fall because of its quiet solitude and the hope for a new generation of animals that were hibernating in their holes.

Her hooves crunched in the brownish leaves as she walked to what she was looking for. She had heard the whispers from the birds that something was coming from the North and that this winter would have no end.

Her long pink hair blew in the chill wind of the mountains and she breathed slowly to acclimate herself to the tallest peak in her hold of Twin Peaks. The Smokey Mountain and the Mount of Amalthea were the two peaks that gave Twin Peaks its name and the Pansy family had held in perpetuity for generations.

She sang to the wind. Calling on her magics that her mother had taught her when she was just a filly to protect her from the other noble children who teased her for her timidity, she thought of the animals that she had seen in the mountains and shaped them in her mind.

The ambient nature magic that she was calling on was ancient and fell onto her like a horseshoe gently setting on a pony. She felt at peace as her body took on the features of a bear with the heavier coat and sharp fangs that were not what ponies had. Her hooves became claws and her eyes shifted colors from their normal calm colors of sky blue to slitted yellow orbs that spoke of her animal spirit.

Testing her words slowly to make sure that she hadn't gone too far into the skinshaping magics, she sat and began to think of where exactly she felt the disturbance in the hills. She laid in the cold dirt and smelled the tracks of the wolves that had passed by recently in the past few days.

"Now where were you going?"

Following the tracks, she noticed that they weren't like normal routes that wolves went- they were focused on a mission. They had passed numerous bunny covens and other prey holes and yet there was no sign of blood or fur anywhere.

She filed that away for later. As she did so, she felt a light dusting of snow fall on her head and she looked up to see that while it was currently snowing- it felt wrong somehow. The magic of snowfall was twisted and she could see the threads of magic in the air twirling like snakes.

Snow magic, if she remembered correctly forth all of her sister Roseluck's magical theory discussions, was normally a whiter shade of pale white. These tendrils of magic were dark blue and twirling at the edges with jet black. Just looking at them made her shiver, but she had to follow them because they were pointing to the top of the Smokey Mountain.

"Maybe I should go tell everypony else about this first. I don't think I could fight a magical monster thing without my sisters."

She began to turn back, but as she slowly trudged down the mountain, she had more and more thoughts of bad things happening. What if it was a giant dragon? She never did like dragons. Or what if she was the only one in the area that could stop whatever it was? She was miles from the castle and she didn't think any of her Guards made trips up here regularly.

Finally, she sighed and began walking up to the peak of the mountain.

Sometimes I don't like it when you're right, brain."

After an hour or two of walking, judging by the sun's position in the sky, she found the nexus point of the magic. Except that now she was really doubting that walking all the way up here was a good idea or if it was suicidal.

She knew large tombs when she saw them and this tomb was massive, with large obsidian arches and a cracked mahogany door that was laying on its side in disrepair. The snow clung to Fluttershy's now shaggy coat and her mind wished that she was Private Smiling Pansy, her forebear. She hadn't turned away in fear when she fought demons from Tartarus and used her lance to spear Queen Chione in the eye.

The tomb looked as if it was inviting her into its depths and she quietly slunk into the tomb without a thought, drawn by a mental voice in her head urging her ever onwards into the unmarked tomb.

Her hoofsteps echoed on the tomb walls and she could see snippets of battles dancing upon the walls. They spoke of the earliest ages of the Houses during the Winter's War and her eyes darted to see Windigoes etched in perfect detail in the cold walls.

_They almost seem as if they were alive and just frozen in time._

Her journey took her past chambers of mummified corpses that, after her initial screams had echoed throughout the empty halls, were probably the builders of the tomb. Their bodies were bent into unnatural poses as if all their emotions had been sucked out and what was left was rage. Faces of the dead snarling at her for disrupting their slumber.

Fluttershy shivered in fear, her marks of the Icari on her wings making her realize that she felt exhausted in her journey that had spanned all day.

She began to see her breath as she probed deeper into the tomb, the temperature had dropped to winter's biting cold even though she remembered that it had only been a nice fall day outside. Her nose smelled the air and unlike tombs that were of untold aeons, this one smelled sweet and like the faintest hint of honey.

Time went slow in the realm of the dead and she began to hallucinate that as she passed room upon room of cadavers, their eyes flickered an eerie bluish-white of unlife and she began to run in fear of her wayward thoughts coming true. She was deep within the mountain when she reached the end of the path and it opened up to a large and ornate throne room.

"Wow. I bet my sisters would like this place."

In the middle of the ice caked room, sat a frozen body inside a large ice crystal that stretched its way up to the ceiling. As Fluttershy approached, she noticed the lithe pony was made of the bluest ice that she had ever seen. Its mane was ringlets of hoary frost and its eyes were of the deepest blue. A horn of purest white say proudly on her head.

Fluttershy was entranced in the beauty of the pony that was frozen in time and place and she gently tapped a hoof upon the sheets of ice that was the prison of the mare.

_Hello, little one._

Fluttershy staggered back, surprised at the mental intrusion and she asked the first question that came to her mind.

**"Who are you?"**

The mare's laugh echoed in Fluttershy' mind and it sounding like the rushing waters that came in the thawing rivers in spring.

_That is a question with a difficult answer. But you may know me as Chione. I was once the Queen of the Windigos._

Fluttershy blanched at this. The stories of the Hate Times and the Windigo War were well known from the Histories and standing in front of a conscious and not evil version of the Queen made her confused.

_I sense apprehension in your mind and you are right to fear me. I seem to have been reviled in these years away. Much of the world seems to have changed in my memory of the land of Equus. But I do like that my counterspell worked._

Fluttershy's mind was working a mile a minute as she felt the frozen antechamber begin to thaw as running rivulets of water flowed into a nearby pool that had escaped her notice at first look.

"What did you do?"

_No, my dear. I should ask you that very same question. What did you do? Let me explain myself. First, I used my magic to use a small level Plisiazeis- what you call "drawing near"_

Fluttershy felt used as she could just watch the large crystalline prison that held the Ice Queen in place sloughed off slabs of ice that tinkled in their pealing laughter as they hit the floor and shattered.

_Second, I tied the counterspell to the future generations of the Six Heroes and that infuriating Queen that upstart styled herself as. Sure, she might have been part of the Eternal Herd, but I was from time immemorial- and an Aspect of Nature._

Fluttershy felt the stinging tears begin to flow. She shouldn't have come here. Thunderlane, Blossomforth and Roseluck all were probably worried sick about how she could have been lost in the mountains.

_And I just waited for centuries while you ponies grew soft and forgot how much fun I had in the last war, Great glacial sheets of hatred sweeping the land and every one of you ponies killing each other for food._

Chione flexed her frozen limbs as her body began to be able to move for the first time in eight millennia,

_And this time is going to be even more fun because I have been stuck in this box for eight thousand years with my mind active and yet unable to move. Its cruel torture to not let things move and yet stay watching the same spider colony crawl over your face and die by frostbite._

Finally the prison shattered and Chione walked unsteadily to the shivering cold mare that had unwittingly freed her.

"So thank you Fluttershy. I might even kill you last because you showed me kindness- though I did trick you to get it."

Chione shrugged. She wasn't one for the semantics of an action. She just felt the running ice water in her veins and thought how much fun she would have in spreading her legion of doom on the unknowing masses.

"Though I see you have gotten a little blue in the face so I might have to cut this session short." Whispering her words of power to herself, she felt the white glow of her aura spark to life on her horn and laughed.

"See you later." Fluttershy's bestial eyes sparked with knowledge about what was happening and even though she felt as if she had the beginnings of frostbite and numbness in all of her limbs, she did attempt to grasp onto one of Chione's legs.

"Exafanizomai."

With that, Fluttershy teleported back to her shared room with her sisters in Twin Peaks shivering and near catatonic in fear. Which surprised both Roseluck and Blossomforth because they hadn't expected their sister to appear from nowhere.

And the horror stories of teleportation gone awry didn't help. There had been tales of ponies teleporting into occupied space and killing the unfortunate bystander.

"Blossom."

"Yes, Roseluck?"

"Did Fluttershy just teleport in?"

"I believe she did- should I call the nurse?"

"Yeah."

Blossomforth put down her quill, quickly got up from her cushiony bed, and pulled the small cord that was connected to the Nurse's Quarters and waited for Redheart to come in and take her sister to a warmer bed.

_Guess Fluttershy had a bad run in with something._

She shrugged and got back to writing letters to Cloudkicker about her day.

_Lady Of The Fields_

Applejack was having a bad day. First of all, you did not mix cider with explosives like the Flim Flam Brothers tried to tell Applebloom to try because it was totally had caused the west wing of the castle to be set on fire again because of some sort of shenanigans that the trio liked to cause.

Granny Smith's idea for tutoring AB was unsound in thought, word, and deed but Applejack could only watch as the contraptions that they built ran roughshod over the fields of Dusky Hills amidst the cheers of the populace made her squirm in the core of her being.

The motto was Hard Work and a Hard Life, not "Contraptions make everything better."

She just shook her head and sat back down in the kitchens. She did like to do so because most of her waiting staff was either an honorary Smartcookie or an actual relative in the snarl of the family tree.

Which brought no end of names for them when it came time to courtly duties. They weren't know as the House of Bastards for nothing because some ponies liked to spread their oats in every field.

"Maybe I'm just not cut out for all this." Applejack motioned to all of the nearby splendor in the kitchen alone. While she was feeling rather glum, a comforting hoof was placed on her shoulder and a drawling voice made her think.

"But AJ, I would be missing one of my favorite ponies to tease."

Braeburn. Applejack thought he was too much of a prettycolt for her tastes and the stallion knew it far too well- often teasing her with his tales of sexual prowess.

"What do you want, Braeburn?" AJ scowled at her cousin.

"Oh nothing really, I just saw how you were down in the dumps and I wanted to cheer you up with a tale about this stallion I met at the market. . ."

"Not interested." Applejack tried to leave as quickly as possible, trotting herself to the door but her cousin was persistent.

"I think his name was something foreign- though I could be making all of this up to get your mind off Big Mac and how he's just so far away-"

Applejack stopped and turned sharply to face her wayward cousin and glared him down from on high.

"I might be missing him, but I do not like what you are insinuating about us, and for your information- he is missing and hasn't been seen for months."

Braeburn just calmly took the ear chewing and took it in stride. "See you are too wound up. And yes I did make up that story- but only to get you off the track of thinking about your brother. You need to get out of the past and towards that bright light that I call the future. Or a train. I don't remember which."

"Fine- but don't take me to one of your gay bars again."

"To the gay bar!"

Braeburn quickly grabbed onto his cousin's hoof and dragged her towards the nearest hole in the wall in Dusky Hills. He just wanted her to forget her brother's past and with Shining Armor Clover's disappearance a month back-

Applejack did not need to remember what her brother did in the Battle of Buffalo Hills.

The large room that the caverns emptied out to was currently filled with a confused Changeling Queen, a Trixie, three thestrals, and one scared stallion watching the dominoes fall and being terrified of the results.

"Are you two done? I hope you two are lovers because I know a lover's quarrel when I hear one miles away."

Blueblood ran through the dossiers that the Inquisition had on the Usurper's troops and noticed the high pitched, feminine voice for who it was. Nightshade- the leader of the Shadow Corps. So that meant the other two were Descent and Freefall- though which one was which was unknown to him since they were twins.

"What did you say you arrogant wench?" Trixie smiled. Blueblood hated when Trixie smiled. That was something to run away from- grins were okay. But actual sweet smiles were few and far between and the bodies of the ponies that made her smile were even fewer.

Blueblood really didn't like where this was going so he quickly trotted over to Chrysalis and tried to start up a conversation to understand what the hay was going on. Thankfully, his powers of a highborn bastard did include some perks. One of which was getting some rather bad enemies of the state to recognize the error of their ways through what was called Speechcraft.

He got into a rhythm and fired up his horn and looked directly at Chrysalis without blinking. The problem with Speechcraft was that you had to have eye contact with ponies to have the maximum effect.

"So why in the world are you with the Lunars? And how did you get out of prison?"

Chrysalis just laughed. "Maybe you should ask Princess Sunbutt how she would like it if I killed her subjects with beams of light from the sky?"

Another problem with Speechcraft was that sometimes you heard information that reminded you that you worked for a nation that wasn't just sunshine and rainbows.

"That's not what I was asking-" Blueblood shook his head to try to get the Changeling to get back on why she was in the caverns.

Chrysalis sat down and let her insectoid wings flap a few times to show her point obliquely. She looked askance at the lightshow that was happening when both Nightshade and Trixie were trading blows. She had seen acts of bravado like this many times in the Hives.

Turning her eyes back towards Blueblood she just sighed and walked back towards the opening of the cavern. She was just tired of dealing with all of these ponies and maybe a nice long nape would be in order.

"You may not think that is a pertinent answer, but look around at all this. Celestia's divine plan has your Princess of the Night up beating plowshares into swords at the latest hint of trouble. And Luna thought she could use me- me for a tool."

"So we would have a civil war on our hands?"

Chrysalis just walked away slowly in near silence, her exoskeleton like body providing her only the smallest amount of noise. "If you need to see me again- just ask around in the dungeons. I found out I rather like being held there forever- it's much safer than you would know."

Blueblood just turned away and watched his partner toss around Nightshade like a rag doll. Skulking away and wincing at their burns and general pain, the trio limped off into their shadows.

Trixie just came up whistling a jaunty tune as she would do when exceedingly happy. "Hey doofus, what's got you in a downer? I just beat the stuffing out of those three without even breaking a sweat. And they tried to summon a starbeast too-"

Blueblood tuned her out and let her reminisce about the battle that she had just won because she was certifiably insane and didn't care about collateral damage.

But maybe that's what they needed to win against what was coming. They needed all the crazy they could get.


End file.
